The Spectator's View: Time to Stop Talking Garbage

So when are food scraps not garbage? When unionized school caretakers decide they don't want to collect them.

That's the situation at Westmount Secondary School where the Hamilton public school board has launched a pilot program to encourage students to drop their lunchtime food scraps into green bins.

The only problem is that the school caretakers won't pick up the green bins or even blue boxes. The Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 4153 contract only requires school caretakers to collect garbage — not recyclables.

So the caretakers will only move recyclable materials from one centralized location in the school to outdoors for pickup.